Random July Post

We have been so busy and I haven't had much time to post a blog. So I'm post a bunch of random things.

These pics are from a few weeks ago when we went with the Vosberg's to the Dane County Fair. We went early in the am to avoid the crowd and the heat, but it was still hotter than heck.



Kristen and Owen are here visiting from Montana, so we've been spending a lot of time with Kory's family.
I have lots of pictures so far, but here are just a few--

Here's Emme, Zander and Owen all playing so nicely together:



Owen doesn't have baby dolls at his house, so everytime we hang out with them he has to come and take Em's dolls. It's sooo cute and of course Kory keeps giving Kristen a hard time about her little boy playing with dolls.



This was SOOO funny. Zander is just about ready to walk on his own, he takes steps and everything. Here he is using his activity table as a walker and Em is racing him with a push cart and Owen is running after them. It was a riot!!



This is Em standing out in Kacey & Tony's porch and Z standing in the kitchen. I just love Em's sunglasses up on her head and everything. What a rock star!!!



Kacey and Tony even got their swimming pool out for everyone. Em actually swam! Usually she just plays on the edges. She was quite the fish that day!


This is from an activity project I did with Em last weekend. I saw it on Cullen's ABC's. I LOVE her ideas!!!! Anyways, we put letters and shapes in that yellow bag and she'd pick one out and then try to mimic it in the shaving cream. She didn't quite get it, but still had a lot of fun!



This is Em riding in Daddy's brand new Ford F-150!! It's quite the nice truck and Em was proud to be riding in it.


I just thought this pic was cute. Emme and Owen just lounging around at G's house.


This is one of my fave's. Em and Aunt Kristen!!!


This is a picture of the three FAVORITE grandkids on Kory's mom's side of the family. Zander (13 months), Owen (16 months), and Emily (2 1/2 years).


We've had quite a busy month of July since arriving home from Hayward. Casey and Mike are busy planning the wedding, they are getting all the big details sorted out. We are so happy to be a part of their big day!
Kory got a brand new pick-up truck which I'll post pics of next time. I haven't taken any yet!!
Em got another bad bug bite last Sunday and was into the Dr this week for another infection from the bite. We are just worrying like crazy about her. The antibiotics made her really sick this week, so we've stopped giving them to her. Waiting for more details from or Dr about what to do next. Poor girl needs to walk around in a net!!!
Kory got a pretty nasty owie this week too. He was washing his semi-truck and went to jump down and his wedding ring got caught on the hood. Not good. He ripped his finger really bad. Thankfully my friend was here and took him to the ER since I was on my way to work already. I met them at the ER and Kory ended up with stiches and a cut-off wedding ring :( Poor guy. He's pretty sore, but doing better each day. Just say some prayers that all heals well. It was exposed down to the tendons and ligaments, and the Dr's say he's very lucky to not have worse damage to his hand.

Hope everyone else is having a fantastic summer!!! Will write more soon.

Hayward 4th of July Trip 2010

Every year my immediate family gets together for a week up at the lake house in Hayward. My parents are always so happy to have us there, and we always have a great time.

I have a gazillion pics that I uploaded to a link, you can check them out here.

Mikaiya helping Emme up the hill-


My sunshine-


Look at those baby blues - lovely Braenna-

Grammy pulling 2 of the girls-

Papa taking Emme up in the neighbor's tree stand-

Mikaiya and Jeff out on the tube. This was Mikaiya's first time and she absolutely loved it-

A picture of all 3 girls looking at the camera...it's a miracle-

Us-

Casey and Mike-

Cori & Jeff-

Check out that ROCK!! Yep-Mike proposed to Casey while we were all out one night. We are sooooo happy for the two of them-

Here's a group shot of us big kids. Thanks to Grammy for watching all 3 girls so we could 'live it up' for a night :)-

Here's Emme trying on Auntie CeCe's ring - I think she likes it!!!! -

A family picture!!!!! We haven't had a new one of these in ages. I love it!!!

Grammy made the girls matching dresses. Aren't they so cute?

We had a great time up north. We did get to visit the ER unfortunately. Emily got bit by a bug on Tuesday and by the middle of the night her arm was incredibly swollen. So we took her to the ER at 1am, and they said she had cellulitis which is basically a bacterial infection. They put her on antibiotics and benadryl, but wanted us to go to the clinic in the morning. So the next day we woke up and her hand/arm were worse!!!! So we took her to the clinic and it was quite the adventurous day - poor little girl! She had to have her blood drawn, which didn't work - so then they got blood via finger pricks. Then she had to have one of her bug bites lanced so they could get some of the ickies out of it and grow it in a culture. Then the worst part was they had to hold her down and give her an antibiotic injection in each thigh. That was awful. Em did soooo good! Thankfully the injections helped and by Thurs morning she was finally doing better. She went back to the clinic 1 more time and they did a finger prick again and the blood draw showed the infection was going down. Ends up she got a staph infection from the bug bite. Very scary!!!

Other than that, the trip was fantastic. I got to waterski - which I hadn't done since before I was pregnant. Got up my first try! Yay me! Got to spend some time with our friends Bruce & Kate and their 2 kiddos. Got to see my little sissy get engaged...how special for all of us!

Can't wait for next year :)

Vegas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kory and I went to Las Vegas on June 17th - 21st, it was a total last minute decision and we ended up having such a nice time. Kory had an idea on Tues (June 15th!!!) that since we already had a long weekend off work to head up north...maybe....we could go to Vegas instead for the Great West Truck Show. So we asked Bonnie if she could watch Em for us, and everything just fell into place. We got a decent last minute deal staying at Harrah's and flying out of Milwaukee. We left Thursday after I got done with work and got back on the red eye Monday morning.

We didn't take a ton of pictures, but I've posted a few of the good ones.

We aren't huge gamblers, but did enjoy a little time in the casino. Here's a pic of my winnings at the NY NY casino. LOL! Thought that was really funny!!!

We even went out of our box and played one of the tables. We played Black Jack by ourselves with the dealer and had a great time. It was a $10 table and we each put in $20. We played for a good 45 min. We were very proud of ourselves and learned a ton! Our dealer was so sweet and she really helped us to learn the game.

Here we are happy to be enjoying our spontaneous vacation:

One of our favorite things at Harrah's was the outside bar, called Carnavale Court they had with live music all day long and the best flair bartenders around! Flippy was one of the bartenders and was 3rd in the world for flair bartending (his mom must be proud...LOL!). Anyways, we LOVED going and watching them do all their tricks. This is one of him balancing all those bottles and drinks on his forehead. He did this trick every day!!!

While we were at Carnavle Court the lead singer from the Ramone's showed up. So he got up on stage and sang a few songs with the band 'The Spazmatics'. It was a riot!!!

If you cheer loud enough during his trick, he walks around the bar and pours free shots in your mouth...yum! This was the lady next to us getting her free shot:

This was another one of their tricks. They put all these cups together and then pour it into shot glasses. Kory watched them enough times to figure out that it was dependant on how much ice was in each cup. Crazy!!

When we were sitting at the bar this guy showed up with this girl. Kory was like - I think that's someone famous. I was like uhh...no clue. So I took a picture of him. Supposedly he's famous - or at least we think he LOOKS like he's famous :)

One of our other favorite places at Harrah's was Toby Keith's bar - I Love this Bar! It was super fun. Here's Kory drinking his beer out of a jar-

Here we are at Toby's bar getting ready for lunch.

We went to the truck show both days (Friday and Saturday). It was a really small show, but Kory got to talk to all the vendors he wanted to and we even got to see some of the show trucks.

This is one that has an amazing tile floor in it:



This was one of my favorites. It has a mural of the firefighters raising the US flag in front of the 9/11 towers. It was georgous!!!

This one caught my eye. I said "Hey honey, can they really lease onto FedEx AND UPS?"...LOL! He was like uh....no idea! I just thought that was really bizarre.

We ended up having a fantastic trip and we are so glad we decided to go at the last minute. We got home at 5am on Monday morning to a very sick little girl. Poor Em had woken up on Monday with a fever. So I stayed home with her Monday and most of Tuesday. On Monday night her fever was at 104.5. It was incredibly scary. She woke up hallucinating. It was very hard to see my little nut bug so sick. She was better by Tuesday and now she's back to 100%.

Kid-free Night Out!

The 2nd weekend in June, we met up with some friends out for dinner then out to the comedy club on State Street and then out to a few bars downtown. We had a blast!!!

Here are the Casey/Kacey's :)

Here are Kory and I doing a lovely self portrait-

Awe...the Vosberg's are adorable...even with Mike in the background :)

Here's Mike with me and Kacey.

Here are the sober two of the bunch :) My neighbor and good friend, Kathy and Kory. They were soooo ready for us to go home! They were good sports though and were finally able to drag Kacey and I out of the bar! Thank goodness :)

Thanks everyone for coming out. We had a blast and hope to do it again soon!!!

Emme's Big Girl Car

We bought Emily a Jeep Renegade last winter and had it in the basement until she was big enough to ride in it. It's quite the Jeep!

Here she is getting ready to go for her first ride~



She decided to let Blue Bear drive first...LOL! She was like um....DRIVE FASTER BEAR!!!



This is her checking under the hood. Pretty sure she's going to be a mechanic someday!

Grammy's Hair Salon

I have to live in reality (even though most days I try not to!) that someday my mom will not own her hair salon. It's really all I've ever known, I remember my dad and I going over there to paint the inside when it literally was just a shell of a store. I remember sitting around the kitchen table as a family and picking out the name and picking the phone number.


It was really, really, really important to me that Emily got to experience my mom's salon. She has owned Lasting Impression Hair Design for 21 years and we are all so incredibly proud of the business she has built from the ground up. We hope that someday soon someone with just as much passion and willingness to learn will take over the salon and continue to support it's growth.
Here is Emily sitting on her special chair for the first time. She is used to getting her hair cut (she gets it cut more often than I get mine cut!!), but not used to being in a salon. This was her first time. She is picking out her nailpolish :)



Here is grammy getting started on the haircut:

Look out, she's going to be a beauty queen:

The bangs are always a challenge - poor girl has curly bangs:

The finished product. Grammy even gave her a mannequin head to take home as a momento of her first salon haircut. Great. Now we have a giant head in the playroom!


Here is Em afterwards deciding to wash her Head's hair:

Well I just wanted to thank mom for letting us come in and for cutting Em's hair (like always!). Thanks for letting Em run around and basically take over the place for an hour. She had fun and so did I.

First day of school

On Monday, Emily started what we call her 'Big Girl School'. We have been talking about it a lot, but this weekend we really talked it up. Kory and I took her together Monday morning and got to meet some of the teachers and a few of the kiddos too. The school is called Gingerbread House. It only accepts kids 2 - 5 and they must be potty trained. They do preschool from 9 - 11:30 every day - the rest of the day is standard daycare. We've gotten through 2 days and she seems to absolutely love it. Her teacher, Miss Maggie (which by the way is the same name as our neighbor's dog - you should have seen Em's face when we told her it was her teachers name! LOL!) is wonderful! She said that Emily is a sweetheart and eats like a champ - if you can believe that :) She goes potty all by herself and has been getting along nicely with the other kids. She even said she follows directions well - must not get that from her stubborn and independent mommy!

This was a very big decision for Kory and I - to move her to a big girl school. She will be 2 1/2 in a couple of weeks and we just decided it was time. I know it's only been 2 days, but we both feel like we have made an excellent decision.

Here is Em on her first day of school. I asked her to smile nice and this is what I got:



This was after school. She was running around like crazy! She was even doing wheelies with her cozy coupe:


Here's a video of a song she kept singing all evening. We have no idea what song it is - so if you know - feel free to clue us in!! She must have learned it at her new school:



Bedtime was a bit of a challenge last night - considering her fantastic nap at daycare. She was sooooo hyper all evening and into night time. Finally about 9pm we went to go to bed and she was still talking away in her room. I peeked in to find her standing in the middle of her room quite proud of her accomplishment:


She cleared every book (except 2) off the book shelf in her room and piled them on top. If you look to the far left you can see that stack is about to topple over. I have no idea how she stacked them so high!!!